Micro Stutters every once in a while (1 Viewer)

Lightning303

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  • September 12, 2009
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    MediaPortal Version: 1.1.3, 1.2.0 Alpha, 1.2.0 Beta, 1.2.0 RC
    MediaPortal Skin: Avalon
    Windows Version: Windows 7 Professional x64
    CPU Type: AMD Athlon II X2 250 (2x 3.0Ghz)
    HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green 500Gb
    Memory: 2x2048MB Kingston ValueRam DDR3-1066 in Dual Channel
    Motherboard: Asus M4A88T-M/USB3
    Video Card: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD5450 1GB DDR3
    Video Card Driver: ATI Catalyst 11.8 (latest)
    Sound Card: VIA VT1708S (on Board) using HDMI Passthrough
    MPEG2 Video Codec: ffdshow tryouts rev. 3972
    MPEG2 Audio Codec: ffdshow tryouts rev. 3972
    h.264 Video Codec: ffdshow tryouts rev. 3972
    Power Supply: be quiet! 430W Pure Power L7
    TV - HTPC Connection: HTPC -> HDMI -> Onkyo TXSR578 -> HDMI -> Toshiba 37 RV555DG

    Hi there,
    so i have a pretty anoying problem for some/all time now.
    When i watch a video i get a stutter every 3-5 minutes or so. Sometimes with a dropping frame, but mostly without, meaning the count in the debug graph for dropping frames does not increase nor is there any info in the log about a dropping frame.
    I tried nearly everything now and thought maybe i should ask here if somebody has an idea.

    This happens in all kind of media, if some old sdtv xvid, or a new 720p tv series or a 1080p movie. Also it does not metter which refresh rate i am running, if its 23,976hz, 24hz, 50hz, i get stutters.
    Also i get perfect playback when using media player classic with the same codec configurations. no stutters or dropping fames or something like that, just as it should be.

    What i tried so far:
    I had this problem as i can remember from the begining of me having a htpc, i boght one 1.5 years back or so, with acually the same configuration like now, but with another mainboard and memory. i had a Asus M4N78-VM board with a Nvidia Geforce 8200 graphicscard onboard and 2x2048 DDR2 Ram. I tried everything on this machiene, installing windows fresh a few times, trying different geforce drivers and so on. So i then figguered, as i wasnt really sattisfied with the onboard graphics card (not able to give me exactly 23,976hz output), that i should change to ati. So i bought the mainboard i have now, with a ati radeon hd 4250 onboard. As this was an AM3 board instead of AM2+ i had to buy new memory too. While some problems i hat, went away because of the new board (23,976 output) the main problem, the stutters stayed. So after a while reading in this forum, and some people saying the 4250 is sometimes not powerfull enough for some content i figuered i should buy a dedicated graphicscard and choose the radeon hd 5450, which also did solve some minor porblems i had (beeing able to output 23,976hz, aswell as 24hz) but still had the problem with the microstutters... :(
    that is what i tried hardware wise, also i checked if the problem is one of my harddrives, but problem accours no matter on which drive the video is, or on wich sata controller the drive is connected (i got 2, one onboard and one as pci card).


    Software wise i tried a lot stuff also, i mentioned i installed windows quiet often to reset everything, i tried different drivers for every hardware, i tried it prior sp1 and after, no change. i tried different codecs, beeing different ffdshow versions, coreavc and the standard one from windows. i also did try saf. at one point i thought it could be a 23,976/24hz problem, and i treid reclock but thats not it either.
    there however is a bunch of applications i am runnign in the background, this being:

    Filezille FTP Server
    sometimes Filezilla FTP Client
    Truecrypt (decrypting harddrives (video also stuttering if video not encrypted))
    clickoff (small tool that automaticly presses ok or another button on specific dialogs from windows)
    microsoft security essentials (antivirus)
    x10receiver.net (software for remote (when not in mediaportal))
    apache (httpd)
    also i "cracked" my termsvr.dll to be able to connect via remotedesktop to my htpc whithout having the main user to logoff, meaning sometimes/often i am logged in as 2 users at the htpc, so i can operate ftp client from remotedesktop on my htpc without having to compromise the htpc/mediaportal at my tv (someone can watch stuff, while i am connected as different user on same pc to "work"). this normaly is just in idle, running filezilla ftp client to download stuff or so, nothing more.

    all this applications i do need, but to debug i turned them all off, but still... stutters... :(

    oh i nearly forgot... mediaportal plugins. i am using mytvseries, movingpictures as well as infoservice, fanarthandler and onlinevideos. disabling them all, aswell as using the default skin didnt help :(. mediapotal was installed fresh lots of times, with and without putting back my backups. i did try different dshowhelper.dll's from this forum but nothing helped :(.
    also the logs are showing nothing at all, i have set everything to highest debug state, and when a stutter accours a was remembering the timing so i could check the logs if something happens there, but nothing, in any log...

    i think i rapped it all up. at this point i just have one idea what could help me. and that is a new cpu. it is the only piece of hardware which i did not change or upgrade. also i build a htpc for my father with exactly the same hardware (built his as a testing a few weeks before i upgraded), and he does not have this problem, i checked it a few times. so i at this point see 2 possibilites. one being, my cpu has some kind of error, that causes him to hickup every once in a while (cuz my fathers does not), or it is just to weak for all the stuff i want to do with my htpc and all the programms and changes in background. oh i nearly forgot, sometimes there is a "thread pausing" or something like that in the evr.log near the point where the stutter occours, but not always, this also made me belive it could be the cpu. maybe i should try a new cpu? the same again or maybe a quadcore?

    at this point i am very thankfull for everybody who took his time to read all of this, i hope somebody has an idea what it could be and what i can do about it. would be gread if somebody knew a way to find out what couses this.
    if additional information are needed i ofcourse will provide them.

    Thanks Lightning303

    edit: added screenshot of the stutter
     

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    Lightning303

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  • September 12, 2009
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    Probably a minor difference between the video and audio HW clocks. You could try https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...renderer-better-video-playback-quality-84441/ (read the 1st post with care) or Reclock. MP Audio Renderer is not yet having all nescessary features for "average joe" usage so you need ffdshow as audio decoder to handle few tasks.

    I actually tried reclock and also the audio renderer a while back, when i also was playing with different dsshowhelper dlls. But i will give it a try again. Just to be sure, you dont mean playing a 23.976fps video with 24hz output with "difference between audio and video hw" right? Because im not doing so, and its happens even with 24fps on 24hz and 25fps on 50hz. i thought about real hw clock a while back too, but i dont realy now who is responsible for the clocks, and as i changed my motherboard including graphics and audio card, i dont realy see how i still could have that problem. tell me if im wrong.

    as what i have treid in the time between make first post and now:
    i bought a new cpu (amd athlon x4 @3ghz), but the problem was still there, so i send it back. i read somewhere outside this forum that slow system hdd could be a problem when pagefile is used, so i put the pagefile on a ramdisk, and also tried deactivating it, no change... :(. And i turned off most services from windows. still no change :(.

    @JACOB B, could you please post you hardware specs and you software setup (os version, programms running in bg and so on)? So i could check if we do have something in common.

    thanks
     

    tourettes

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  • January 7, 2005
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    Probably a minor difference between the video and audio HW clocks. You could try https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...renderer-better-video-playback-quality-84441/ (read the 1st post with care) or Reclock. MP Audio Renderer is not yet having all nescessary features for "average joe" usage so you need ffdshow as audio decoder to handle few tasks.

    I actually tried reclock and also the audio renderer a while back, when i also was playing with different dsshowhelper dlls. But i will give it a try again. Just to be sure, you dont mean playing a 23.976fps video with 24hz output with "difference between audio and video hw" right? Because im not doing so, and its happens even with 24fps on 24hz and 25fps on 50hz. i thought about real hw clock a while back too, but i dont realy now who is responsible for the clocks, and as i changed my motherboard including graphics and audio card, i dont realy see how i still could have that problem. tell me if im wrong.

    I'm talking about really minor difference between the audio and video HW clocks. 23.976 vs 23.970 for example.
     

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